Tuesday, 04 December 2012

Daily Twitter Links for Tuesday 4 December 2012

As an outsider, I won't pretend a sophisticated understanding of the cultural relationship between Australia and New Zealand, except to say that hearing Aussies and Kiwis muse on it reminds me of how Germans and Austrians or Americans and Canadians speak about their respective neighbors. There is something like a sibling rivalry -- affectionate if occasionally tense relations, differences enough to be the butts of one another's jokes, and mutual understanding such that both sides grasp the rivalry with more sophistication than any outsider.

I happen to enjoy that sort of puzzling, for understanding is never so enjoyable as when it comes with much laughter. And I must admit that I laughed a lot at the following story, found in a copy of The Christchurch Press that I perused while eating my Eggs Benedict in a Greymouth, New Zealand diner. Headlined "Being called Aussie judged 'racist,'" it's one of those stories that juxtaposes the awful with the absurd, so that you feel bad laughing, but can hardly help it as the villain turns from mean-spirited harangues to blowing raspberries. Beyond the ugliness and the amusement, no study of trans-Tasman relations is complete without this case study.

But I also felt, as I do increasingly in movie theaters, the pleasure and relief of knowing that for two-and-a-half hours, I would be permitted the grace of concentration. I would not be answering e-mail, or the phone, or gazing guilty over at a basket of laundry in need of folding or dog hair in need of vacuuming—the sorts of things I too often do when I’m watching a movie on TV or on a laptop at home. I would be given a reprieve from multitasking. And when I wept or laughed or gasped in dismay, I knew I would be doing it in the company of strangers who were there in that theater for the same purpose: To be transported by, immersed in, somebody else’s intricately realized vision of life.

That communion in the dark is an experience that many fewer of us are having in the age of home entertainment and instant downloads. In 2011, movie theater ticket sales fell to their lowest point since 1995, and took another dip this past summer, perhaps partly in response to the Colorado movie theater shootings.

Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed the Leveson proposal today with waffling noises instead of marshaling a defense of a free press. “I’m not convinced at this stage that statute is necessary,” he said, testing the wind, leaving himself room to call for a statute if he needed it for a future campaign. What he should have told the public was, yes, British newspapers have caused great and unnecessary injuries to private citizens, they have pilloried celebrities for being celebrities, they appear to have bribed public officials, they have obstructed justice, and some of their corporate overlords have covered up their crimes and misdemeanors. But you’re the customer. Why do you keep buying this stuff? There are plenty of laws on the books to prosecute the criminal element in the press for their behavior—why don’t we do a better job of using well-defined, well-tested laws rather than create a quasi-court that could easily be turned into a free-press killer?

Then I’d have him invite the British press to make their case for press freedom. Because it’s incumbent upon the British press to explain to its readers why they can’t do their job with a regulator’s thumb poking them in the eye. If they can’t make that case, especially with the example of the United States standing so close, then maybe they don’t deserve a free press.

Comments

As an outsider, I won't pretend a sophisticated understanding of the cultural relationship between Australia and New Zealand, except to say that hearing Aussies and Kiwis muse on it reminds me of how Germans and Austrians or Americans and Canadians speak about their respective neighbors. There is something like a sibling rivalry -- affectionate if occasionally tense relations, differences enough to be the butts of one another's jokes, and mutual understanding such that both sides grasp the rivalry with more sophistication than any outsider.

I happen to enjoy that sort of puzzling, for understanding is never so enjoyable as when it comes with much laughter. And I must admit that I laughed a lot at the following story, found in a copy of The Christchurch Press that I perused while eating my Eggs Benedict in a Greymouth, New Zealand diner. Headlined "Being called Aussie judged 'racist,'" it's one of those stories that juxtaposes the awful with the absurd, so that you feel bad laughing, but can hardly help it as the villain turns from mean-spirited harangues to blowing raspberries. Beyond the ugliness and the amusement, no study of trans-Tasman relations is complete without this case study.

But I also felt, as I do increasingly in movie theaters, the pleasure and relief of knowing that for two-and-a-half hours, I would be permitted the grace of concentration. I would not be answering e-mail, or the phone, or gazing guilty over at a basket of laundry in need of folding or dog hair in need of vacuuming—the sorts of things I too often do when I’m watching a movie on TV or on a laptop at home. I would be given a reprieve from multitasking. And when I wept or laughed or gasped in dismay, I knew I would be doing it in the company of strangers who were there in that theater for the same purpose: To be transported by, immersed in, somebody else’s intricately realized vision of life.

That communion in the dark is an experience that many fewer of us are having in the age of home entertainment and instant downloads. In 2011, movie theater ticket sales fell to their lowest point since 1995, and took another dip this past summer, perhaps partly in response to the Colorado movie theater shootings.

Prime Minister David Cameron dismissed the Leveson proposal today with waffling noises instead of marshaling a defense of a free press. “I’m not convinced at this stage that statute is necessary,” he said, testing the wind, leaving himself room to call for a statute if he needed it for a future campaign. What he should have told the public was, yes, British newspapers have caused great and unnecessary injuries to private citizens, they have pilloried celebrities for being celebrities, they appear to have bribed public officials, they have obstructed justice, and some of their corporate overlords have covered up their crimes and misdemeanors. But you’re the customer. Why do you keep buying this stuff? There are plenty of laws on the books to prosecute the criminal element in the press for their behavior—why don’t we do a better job of using well-defined, well-tested laws rather than create a quasi-court that could easily be turned into a free-press killer?

Then I’d have him invite the British press to make their case for press freedom. Because it’s incumbent upon the British press to explain to its readers why they can’t do their job with a regulator’s thumb poking them in the eye. If they can’t make that case, especially with the example of the United States standing so close, then maybe they don’t deserve a free press.

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About the Author

About this Blog

This blog speaks freely about law, politics and the internet. While the focus is on Australia, developments in other nations around the world are considered as well.

Background

The title of this blog is inspired by the Opinion of the US Supreme Court in Board of Education v Barnette 319 US 624 (1943):
"But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."